With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.”
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.”
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door—tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.”
“Again, well? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband’s name, may be placed